Video Games, Muscle Memory, and a Tennessee Vol's Cheerleader.

What do all three of these things have in common? My poor performence with NCAA 08. I was at Circut City today looking for Pro Evo for my PS2 and failed horribly at finding it. So, I bought NCAA 08 instead.

I got home and started my dynasty. I picked who I was going to target for scouting, jersey numbers, holes in my schedule, etc and got underway with my dynasty only to find that my fingers, which can remember just when to hold my sticks to my palm when doing paradiddles, could not figured out that R1 was not sprint. My fingers have been hammered by FIFA 08 since I got home from San Diego almost a month ago. I have been trying to get through my first season with my French team (I am moving to the Italian league or perhaps the Irish league if I ever end this season). My fingers have grown accustomed to seldom using most of my trigger buttons except for the rare chance that Cisse is going to be able to make a run into the box, then I find myself jamming the button to make him go and hitting the square button to cross into the box.

Let me tell you, the Tennessee Volunteers were not going to have any of this foward running into some mythical box. I spent six hours getting my fingers adjusted to making quick decisions against the UCLA Bruins offensive and defensive lines. Then I had to remember how to read defenses all over again.

There are two possible solutions to my conoundrum: 1. I could play NCAA during college football season and simply give FIFA. This works since I usually hold off until Christmas to get the new FIFA. 2. I could simply give up playing college football games and just play FIFA all the time. The problem that comes with that is if I buy Pro Evo, I run into the issue of switching the controls around on that too.

Needless to say, after several bouts of intense cursing at my tv and half hearted toss of my controller, my fingers started remembering how to make the back crash and the secondary press one side of the pass defence and I beat UCLA. This experience has reinforced my belief that proper football is truly the beautiful game, if only for its lack of complicated movements made by the entire team before one person kicks the ball.